Russia’s Missile Warning Satellites Are Going Dark, But Don’t Celebrate Yet

A nuclear power with Astigmatism does not become “safer.” It becomes jumpier.

Licensed by the author from Envato Elements

Thanks to the Ukraine War, many of my readers are used to cheering on any Russian Federation capability collapse. Me too…

The contemporary logic goes, “anything that makes Russia weaker, makes the West stronger.” And while that is mostly true for Russia’s conventional military and economy, the logic starts to warp a little when we get into strategic nuclear forces.

Agenstvo.Novosti on Telegram has been circulating a claim that Russia’s space based missile early warning network is collapsing. The headline version is simple: by the end of 2025, as in tomorrow, Russia may have only one functioning “Tundra” early warning satellite left.

But here’s why we should not pop the champagne just yet.

A nuclear power with Astigmatism does not become “safer.” It becomes jumpier. It starts mistaking shadows for incoming warheads. It starts assuming the worst because it no longer has the tools to prove the best.

This is one of those stories where the technical detail matters because it drives the psychology.

Missile warning is a clock race. It is less about stopping a strike and more about deciding whether you are under attack, and whether you fire back before you get decapitated.

When that warning clock gets shorter and noisier, the risk of catastrophe goes up for everyone.

The short version, as presented through Agenstvo.Novosti and echoed by nuclear forces analyst Pavel Podvig, is that Russia’s “Kupol” early warning constellation, formally the EKS program, is no longer operating at the level it needs.

Podvig’s assessment, based on publicly observed orbital behavior and satellite maneuvers, is that only Kosmos 2552 still shows signs consistent with being operational, while Kosmos 2541 and Kosmos 2563 appear to have failed after orbit adjustment activity earlier in 2025.

In trouble - COSMOS 2563

Still Operational - COSMOS 2552

In trouble - COSMOS 2541

Satellites in these kinds of orbits need routine orbit correction and station keeping. When that cadence stops, it can suggest a propulsion issue, an attitude control problem, a power failure, or a system that is no longer maintaining mission requirements.

This does not prove the satellite is dead, but it is a red flag in a category where red flags matter.

RussianSpaceWeb, which tracks Russian space programs closely, describes a similar picture: Kosmos 2552 is the only Tundra spacecraft not showing clear signs of failure, while Kosmos 2541 and 2563 look like they stopped functioning after maneuvers in March and July 2025.

If you want the cleanest conclusion that can be defended with public information, it is this: Russia appears to have one Tundra satellite that might still be working, and even that one has enough oddities that analysts are watching it closely.

The more important point is operational. Russia originally intended a larger constellation and has only launched six Tundra satellites since 2015.

Analysts and Russian statements have long indicated that four satellites are needed for minimum operational coverage. If you fall below that, you do not simply lose capacity, you lose persistence. The system stops being a reliable, “always on” warning net and starts becoming a sometimes tool that misses things at the worst moment.

The Tundra satellites are the space layer of Russia’s missile warning system. They use infrared sensing to spot the hot boost phase of ballistic missile launches, then feed warning into a broader architecture that includes ground based radars.

This matters because ground radars see launches later than satellites do, especially when geography and radar horizon get involved. Satellites can detect a launch while the missile is still climbing.

Radars often do not see the threat until it clears the horizon and presents a clean track. That time difference is the difference between “we have minutes to decide” and “we have seconds to make a panic decision.”

A functioning space warning layer buys decision time. It also buys certainty. It lets you correlate signals. It lets you say, “that was a real launch, not a sensor glitch.”

When you lose that, you do not just lose warning, you lose confidence in the warning you still have.

I understand the temptation to grin and say, “Good. Russia is degraded.”

Here is the problem. Strategic stability is not only about capability. It is about perception under stress.

If Russia has a degraded warning net, it may start leaning harder on worst case assumptions. It may shorten its internal decision cycle. It may push authority downward. It may preplan responses in ways that reduce human judgment, because human judgment takes time, and time is what they just lost. It increases the chance of misinterpretation, because patchy detection feeds paranoia. Paranoia is Russia’s favorite fuel source.

This is the nightmare math of nuclear command and control: a weaker warning picture can produce a faster trigger finger.

If you want a historical reminder of why this matters, the Cold War has receipts.

In 1983, the Soviet early warning system produced indications that looked like a US missile launch, and officer Stanislav Petrov judged it was likely a false alarm and did not escalate. If you remove humans like Petrov from the chain, or compress the time they have to think, you increase the chance that the next false alarm becomes the last alarm.

In 1995, Russia briefly interpreted a Norwegian scientific rocket as a potential missile event and activated parts of its nuclear command chain before the situation clarified. That incident ended safely, but it showcased the core danger: early warning ambiguity can generate nuclear level reactions before reality catches up.

Russia losing reliable space-based warning pushes it closer to that kind of ambiguity, more often, with less margin.

Licensed by the author from Envato Elements. Markup graphics added by the author in Canva.

Why this is a problem specifically with Putin’s Russia

Because Putin’s Russia does not do ambiguity calmly. It does ambiguity with all the calmness of a man who just ate a gas station tuna sandwich, facing a locked bathroom, with a loaded pistol.

Modern Russia also wraps its deterrence logic around warning cues. Russia’s publicly described nuclear deterrence framework explicitly includes the idea that “reliable information” about ballistic missile launches can be a trigger condition for nuclear response.

Now tie those together.

If Russia’s leadership believes warning indicators can justify extreme escalation, and Russia’s warning layer becomes less reliable, then the definition of “reliable information” becomes a political and emotional decision, not a technical one.

That scares me more than a working constellation does.

How does Russia’s system compare to the US?

America’s legacy space based warning architecture includes the Space Based Infrared System, SBIRS, which combines geosynchronous satellites and hosted payloads in highly elliptical orbit.

The Space Force’s own messaging around the program refers to GEO 6 as the sixth and final SBIRS geosynchronous satellite, which gives you a sense of the baseline constellation size on the GEO side alone.

On top of that, the US has maintained layered warning with other systems over time, including the older Defense Support Program heritage and the ongoing build toward replacement and augmentation efforts. Basically, the US warning architecture is not hanging by a single spacecraft.

Even if one SBIRS satellite goes down, the United States does not suddenly lose the ability to see launches. It loses redundancy, not existence.

What about China?

China is building toward better missile warning, but it is not as mature as the United States, and it has historically had less need for a global warning net because its posture was built around smaller forces and assured retaliation rather than launch on warning.

That is changing.

Open source strategic assessments from US defense circles have been explicit for years that China is modernizing its nuclear forces and improving sensing, including early warning related capabilities.

A December 2025 Information Series paper (PDF warning) from the US National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies points directly to the Pentagon’s 2024 China military power report pages that discuss China’s movement toward a more developed warning posture.

That same ecosystem of reporting has also noted a key detail that should make you raise an eyebrow: Russia has publicly stated it is helping China build a missile attack warning system.

That is not a small thing. That is Moscow exporting the very nervous system it is now apparently failing to keep alive for itself.

So the comparative picture looks like this.

The United States has mature, redundant space based warning and is building more.

China is building a more capable warning stack and has gotten help from Russia.

Russia, the country that built its strategic identity around being able to see the American punch coming, may be drifting toward a situation where it cannot reliably see at all.

Deterrence is an abusive relationship with a violent actor.

If Russia cannot maintain reliable early warning, it has three ugly options.

First, it can accept a degraded picture and live with uncertainty. That makes it more likely to overreact in crisis, because it will assume it is being set up.

Second, it can compensate by leaning harder on ground radars and rapid decision cycles. That compresses the time available to validate a warning and increases the chance of catastrophic misread.

Third, it can compensate by altering posture and command arrangements. That is where you start hearing phrases like pre delegation, automated response logic (AI), or fallback systems designed to ensure retaliation even after decapitation (Russian Perimeter aka Dead Hand). Those systems tend to reduce the space for a calm human being to say, “Hold on, that does not look right.”

When a state becomes less confident in its ability to detect an attack and respond in a controlled way, it can become more sensitive, not less. It can start interpreting routine events, exercises, sensor anomalies, or even accidents as deliberate probing.

That is how wars start in the margins.

It is also how nuclear crises accelerate when they should slow down.

Russia has a long record of mirror imaging. It assumes others plan the way it plans. It assumes deception because it uses deception. It assumes conspiracy because the Kremlin runs on it.

Now put that mindset in a room where the warning picture is incomplete.

If a radar operator sees a strange track, if a satellite feed drops, if a rocket launch happens in the wrong place at the wrong time, the Russian system may not have enough independent confirmation channels to slow down and verify. The system has to decide anyway.

This is the definition of strategic instability: forced decisions under uncertainty at extreme stakes.

Even if the constellation is limping, Russia will not broadcast “We are blind.” It will posture. It will talk about new deployments and modernization. It will do what it always does when it is weak. It will pretend it is strong.

That creates another Western trap. Western media and casual commentators may dismiss the story as unverified, or they may treat it as comedic incompetence.

It is incompetence, but it is not comedic.

An early warning failure does not make Russia harmless.

If the reporting is accurate, there are a few indicators to watch in 2026.

Watch whether Russia launches replacement satellites quickly. The program has lagged for years. That lag does not get easier under sanctions, war spending pressure, and an industrial base that already struggles to produce complex space hardware at scale.

Watch whether Russian leadership rhetoric shifts toward more hair trigger warning language. Watch for emphasis on preemption, threat of decapitation, or claims that the West is preparing a surprise strike. Those talking points often function as internal justification for changing posture.

Finally, watch how Russia behaves in future crises. A state with a degraded warning net is more likely to treat NATO exercises near its borders as intentional provocation. It is more likely to respond unpredictably because it fears military surprise.

If Russia is becoming less able to see, the West should not clap. It should quietly take the funds out of the victory parade and put them into crisis management.

Because a blind bear is not less dangerous. It just starts biting earlier.

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